Ethan Hawke --> Broadway --> August: Osage County --> Film Adaptations.

Ethan Hawke. I'm more of a fan now than I used to be. Obviously, I enjoy Dead Poet's Society, and I think he was brilliant in Before Sunrise and especially Before Sunset, but I also know that his writing attempts and directing efforts have been said to be less than stellar. And really, I have zero desire to see, ever, his modernized Hamlet. One of his most recent films, though, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead pairs him with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and also features Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney, and it's very good. Excellent direction and writing helps, but Hawke more than held his own against the powerful PSH. Plus, he's going to be in one of the vignettes, I think, in the upcoming New York, I Love You, which I'm really looking forward too--it's fashioned after Paris, je t'aime, which came out a few years ago and was nicely done.

Hawke's done a fair amount of theater work also; though I've never seen him in anything on stage, I hear The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard's 9-hour 3-play epic, was really something. That was on Broadway a couple years ago, and Hawke I think was nominated for a Tony as Best Featured Actor or something for his performance. This interview was shortly after.

Is it ever awkward to direct a friend and work on another friend's script?
I've done it my whole life. I've done six movies with Richard Linklater. I've done a couple of movies with Andrew Niccol. I enjoy getting to work with people who are like-minded. You have to treat each other with as much respect as possible, and then your friendships deepen. The only thing I've learned is that you can't ever do each other a favor. If you want to do your friends a favor, you should pick their kids up after school or lend them your umbrella. If you do each other favors in your work, your friendship doesn't last very long. Josh [Hamilton] and I have worked together so much, not only through the theater company we ran; we were in the movie Alive together and we did Hurlyburly and Coast of Utopia together. We've literally spent years backstage together. When he hears me waxing poetic in the director's chair, he rolls his eyes. He was 15 minutes late to rehearsal yesterday, and I laid into him in a way that I would only with somebody I've known for 20 years.

Why have you remained so loyal to the theater?
I guess it's my first love. There's something about the theater that's not precious; it's so humble and human. There's a myth out there that movies are immortal. But the truth is, the first movie I made, Explorers, when I was 13, is really dated. You can watch it, but it's not the same. The music is kind of cheesy. It feels like the early '80s. But if somebody comes up to me and says, "I saw you in A Joke," which was the first production Malaparte did, there's some magic to that. It means we shared an evening together once 15 years ago, and if they loved it, it's not dated in their minds. It's still fresh and relevant.

Mary-Louise Parker once said that nobody in Hollywood cares about people's theater credits. Do you find that to be true?
They're slightly intimidated by it. They feel that it's somehow legitimate, and that bothers them. But they haven't seen any of it and they don't really care. Who's a better actress than Mary-Louise Parker? Nobody. She should be in everything! Let's face it, they hire [movie] directors who are ad guys. Every now and then there's a serious filmmaker, but most of them want a product, they don't want art. Art is dangerous. Art is scary. Art is movies like Apocalypse Now that they're not going to know how to sell. They don't want people to take risks. If they're going to spend that much money, they want to know how many units they can sell. It's like Coca-Cola to them.

What are your favorites of the films you've acted in?
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And Gattaca. There are a few that I like, but those three might be my favorites.

Damn straight, they should be. I am by no means a connoisseur of Ethan Hawke's body of work, but I feel like it's not completely out of line to say that it's likely they're the best work he's done, and perhaps the best he'll ever do. Film-wise, that is. I hear The Coast of Utopia really was amazing. I like how he, like PSH, considers theater to be his first love.

I do find it interesting that he says that Hollywood doesn't respect Broadway cred. A couple other interviews I've read with major theater players have said the same thing, and I just think that's funny, when you see more and more frequently, big stars going to New York from Cali to prove themselves through theater. That revival of American Buffalo that was barely open? It starred John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment. And a couple years ago, Three Days of Rain was on Broadway with Julia Roberts. Personally, I would have gone to see either of her costars over her--I love Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper is pretty good too.

Also, the mention of Mary-Louise Parker...she's coming back to Broadway this season in the Roundabout's production of Hedda Gabler, which is very highly anticipated. I know the story is German and the eponymous character is a really strong female part, which is refreshing. It's one of the reasons I loved August: Osage County--Tracy Letts wrote several great parts for women in the show. The mother and her three daughters really are the stars. Speaking of that--it's being made into a film for 2011! That's so exciting. I hope, though, they don't ruin it by trying to recast it...the original Steppenwolf cast was amazing. I can't think of a single star who could play Barbara better than Amy Morton.

It seems I never wrote about it. Well. In the play, an Oklahoma family patriarch, Beverly Weston, hires a woman, Johnna, to help around the house. His wife Violet is sick in all sorts of ways, and their relationship is very dysfunctional--he drinks, she pops pills--and they have three middle-aged daughters. Their middle daughter Ivy lives near home. Their oldest daughter Barbara lives in Colorado and works at a college, as does her soon-to-be-ex-husband Bill; their daughter Jean is a cool, complacent, pot-smoking fourteen-year-old. Their youngest, Karen, is recently engaged to a greasy guy named Steve, and she lives in Florida. All three girls, plus Violet's sister Mattie Fae, her husband Charlie, and her son "Little" Charles, come to the old family homestead when Bev disappears shortly after hiring Johnna. All sorts of hijinks ensue and the play approaches about a thousand and a half different issues, from the mundane like drugs and alcohol, to the taboos pedophilia and incest. It's very well done--the pacing alone is an accomplishment, as the play runs about three hours and never drags. Originally, Bev was played by the playwright's own father, until he passed away. The entire cast was from the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, which was started by Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney, and Jeff Perry. Nearly everyone moved with the show when it went to Broadway, and it was nominated for/won a host of Tonys. Letts also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for 2008, which made me happy.

Anyway, it's being adapted for film, and first off, I hope the changes aren't too devastating, even though I have a feeling they will be. They're going to try to condense a 3 hour play to a 2 hour movie, maybe even shorter, and unless it's done well, the pacing is going to be destroyed and it's all downhill from there. And the cast--there are very few Hollywood names I can imagine in it. Maybe I'll adapt plays and screenplays for film after college. I'm taking a course "From Fiction to Film" presently and I bet I could do a much better job than half of these. Adaptations are, I feel, not given enough respect. They're a lot harder to pull off than you'd think. Often, while the structure and plot and characters are important, what you're really trying to maintain is the integrity of the theme, the tone, and the "meaning" in general. I used to nitpick and hate when the movie deviated from a book at all, but now I'm at a point where I can mostly separate my feelings for a book from my feelings for a film. Mostly. Hehe.

And again, I'm off on tangents and writing way to much. Meh. Stopping now.

Sometimes when I see a great movie or a great play I think, Being human means you’re really alone...

...So many things I’m interested in come down to the subject of regret. That’s Capote alone on the plane at the end of ‘Capote,’ the priest and the nun in “Doubt” who make judgments they may wish they hadn’t and Clint Eastwood [in Gran Torino]. I try to live my life in such a way that I don’t have profound regrets. That’s probably why I work so much. I don’t want to feel I missed something important...

I still get wide-eyed... It’s true that I’ve made a lot of movies, and I know there’s a microphone over there and a camera back there, but when you see something great, you lose all that. I’m sitting forward, and I’m being moved, and I have no idea how he did it. I don’t know Clint Eastwood, but what’s amazing is that you have the sense that he’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing. He’s so committed. In this film, he keeps the action going, and the people don’t ever behave against their true nature. That’s what I look for in my work: when a writer can deftly describe the human experience in a way that you didn’t think could even be put into words. That doesn’t happen often, but it gives me something to play inside. Too much of the time our culture fears subtlety. They really want to make sure you get it. And when subtlety is lost, I get upset...

I heard that Eastwood is saying that this will be his last film as an actor... There’s part of me that feels that way during almost every movie. On ‘Synecdoche,’ I paid a price. I went to the office and punched my card in, and I thought about a lot of things, and some of them involved losing myself. You try to be artful for the film, but it’s hard. I’d finish a scene, walk right off the set, go in the bathroom, close the door and just take some breaths to regain my composure. In the end, I’m grateful to feel something so deeply, and I’m also grateful that it’s over... [smiling] And that’s my life.

-- Philip Seymour Hoffman

I want that life.

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Now playing: Simon and Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York

One of the more upsetting things about New York...

Excerpt from an interview with Raul Esparza, one of my other latest favorite Broadway actors. Saw him last February in The Homecoming, which was extremely weird (and speaking of which, Harold Pinter died the other day...), but he was brilliant in Speed-the-Plow, and a real scene stealer, which says a lot--he was up against two popular TV stars, Jeremy Piven and Elisabeth Moss.

You've been so prolific in the past six years in New York. Have you come across any stumbling blocks in getting the parts you want to play?
I've been really, really blessed. And I've been able to do projects that I've been excited about. The biggest thing that I worry about is the lack of new writing and the ability to create new work. I haven't had a lot of opportunities to do that. We seem to be in a time where there are so many rules, or where shows are trying to make music that is really great—I mean who doesn't love Abba?—serve a story. But then you're not really dealing with acting; it's sort of a wink and a nod, and everybody's having a great time going, "Isn't this funny that we're trying to make these songs dramatic?" That trend in New York does worry me: "Let's go with properties that we already know." It's not giving writers a chance to have a voice and make mistakes.

Yeah, for musical theater fans, it's a little scary.
I think it is. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back. It's just so expensive, I can understand why producers are afraid to take chances. If you think about it coldly, I think that Sondheim would have a tough time starting his career now. You know? Who's going to take a chance on a musical about lunatics like Anyone Can Whistle? People would be like, "Are you crazy? No. We're going to adapt Mr. and Mrs. Smith.'"

Love him. This is from back around 2006, 2007 when he was in Company, which was supposed to be great, though I've heard firsthand that it was pretty dull. The following question after this was if he'd seen Spring Awakening yet. Haha. He did and said he liked it. Really though, it's so rare now that something new and original dramatic pieces come out, and it's scary. It's scary that no one's taking chances, though understandable, and it's a huge threat to Broadway, and even off-Broadway. Especially for people my age looking for futures in it. Thanks to Andy Warhol and Marc Jacobs, I can accept that popularity is not necessarily a bad thing, and it isn't always terrible that art and commerce are so permanently linked, but it is still stifling. There are voices to be heard that are getting lost in the shuffle, I think, because no one thinks anyone wants to hear them.

Though, the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York is always supporting and producing new plays. It's the pet project of John Ortiz and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who was featured in a great article by the New York Times recently.

While movies typically require an elaborate and expensive mechanism, plays can be relatively simple to produce. Every year, LAB has a two-week “summer intensive” workshop during which 35 to 40 plays are rehearsed and read. Company members — there are about 100 — offer their critiques and the artistic directors then select the 10 or 15 plays they would like to see go to the next step. “Most of us liked ‘Philip Roth in Khartoum,’ ” Hoffman said. “Some of the women had problems with it, but I asked my mother to come to a reading, and she thought the female characters rang true.” Hoffman lit another cigarette. “People only want to invest in a play that they think will do well. They are not interested in risky theater. But even more traditional theater is pure risk, which is what I love about it. You roll the dice for the thrill of rolling the dice.”

LAB is the company that produced a number of Stephen Adly Guirgis's plays, including one of my favorite plays ever, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. I wish I'd gotten the opportunity to see it performed. It's this amazing dissection of the actions of Judas against Jesus, and it shows his trial in limbo. The NYT article mentions him--Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play, “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” directed by Hoffman in 2000, cemented LAB’s reputation as a theater company committed to significant new voices. “I used to think I was Catholic until I met Stephen,” Hoffman joked. “But I am not Catholic the way he is. He is tortured and haunted by that religion, and you see it in his work.” I've read Jesus Hopped the A Train and two of Guirgis's other plays, Our Lady of 121st Street and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings. They were all good, but not as good as Judas Iscariot. I'd wanted to see his latest, The Little Flower of East Orange, when it was playing last spring, but I didn't get a chance to.

These men are fierce. There's no other way to describe them. They write, act, direct with incredible intensity. Bennett Miller, who directed PSH in Capote, first met him at a theater camp in Saratoga over twenty years ago, and said that everyone liked him because he was serious about acting.

Haha, it's funny...this Times article...I think I mentioned that theater is my first love and you never get over your first love:

...It is easy to forget that Hoffman is a major movie star with an Oscar on his mantel. He appears not to have a trace of ego. “That’s why I wrote the character of the saintly nurse Phil Parma in ‘Magnolia’ for Phil,” said Paul Thomas Anderson. “Phil is that good — he’s committed to art and not in a phony, grandstanding way. He really wants to live a life in the arts that means something.” There are few other Academy Award-winning actors who have devoted themselves to the full-time running of a theater company. “It sounds noble, but it’s really not,” Hoffman said. “I do this because it gives me a home, a place where I can come and work. The movies are great, but they require a different kind of concentration, and then they’re over. Theater was my first love, and it’s been the biggest influence on my life. The theater is why I got into acting and why I’m still in acting...I’m happy here,” he said, sounding surprised at his glee. “You never forget your first love.”

I used to be on the fence about how I felt about PSH--I still haven't seen Capote, but I think I slightly resented him for beating Heath Ledger for the Oscar in 2006--but ever since Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I've been warming up to him. Now I'm definitely a fan...

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Now playing: Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy

Equus and yet more theater musings.

Yep, got stage seating for the day before Spring Awakening closes. I couldn't help it. I got the email as I was sitting at my desk about to do some work, and so I got first pick over the seats. The timing was perfect. I couldn't pass it up. So worth it. I'm so excited.

I went to see Equus yesterday. Well, the day before, now. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was truly excellent. Weird, but excellent. I was deeply disappointed that the theater was half empty. Granted, it was a matinee the day after Christmas, and it was a pretty dark, eerie play. But still. It must be so demoralizing to perform for such a weak crowd.

I picked up the play today when I was at the library; I want to look it over again. I dozed off during a slower part in the first act, and either way, it was a little confusing: the set was extremely bare, and there were several parts that were supposed to be flashbacks, so it wasn't the easiest to follow. Plus, Richard Griffiths's character, Dr. Martin Dysert, went off on a lot of long asides to the audience, which was kind of obnoxious. But of course, he was brilliant, so it didn't matter.

The story is, Dysert is a child psychologist in a hospital in England. The magistrate frequently sends hims headcases who are sentenced to psych treatment instead of prison. He's dissatisfied with his life--he's been working there for 9 years, helping kids isn't fulfilling him, and his marriage stalled a long time ago. At the beginning of the show, the magistrate comes to him believing he's the only one who can help her latest case, who she just managed to get off of the jail charges--Alan Strang, who has blinded six horses with a spike.

At first, Alan refuses to speak, and responds only with jingles from commercials. Dysert slowly manipulates him into speaking, and it both fascinated and terrified by the boy, who was raised by an atheistic father and deeply religious mother, and has somewhat transferred his worship of Jesus to a horse figure, Equus. He works during the week in an appliance shop, but through a girl named Katie, he has gotten a job at a nearby stable on the weekends. Horses have always fascinated him, and he loves working with them, but he refuses to ride them. Instead, once every three weeks, he sneaks into the stable and takes out one in particular--Nugget--and rides nude through the fields, screaming his passion. Dysert is torn between pity and sympathy: while he recognizes that Alan is miserable, he envies the passion, the worship he feels, that is absent from his life. He also realizes that if he "cures" the boy, it is quite likely that the boy will fall into an inescapable numbness. He points out to the magistrate: the boy is ardently worshipful, full of spirit and a vivid (though, yes, agonizing) liveliness, yet he's the one who's "insane"?

In the end, Dysert gives Alan a placebo, getting him to tell the full story at last. The boy tells how he found himself attracted to Katie, and though he tried to and wanted to make love to her, he couldn't, when she took him to the stable, because all he felt was horseflesh. All he could feel, see, smell, was horse, and he could do nothing because Equus was watching him. Dysert makes empty promises to the boy, swearing that he will make the nightmares end and help him, knowing that he can't deliver. The play closes with Dysert covering Alan with a blanket and letting him sleep.

I had had my doubts about seeing Daniel Radcliffe as Alan. I know there had been a lot of talk about "Harry Potter" being naked on stage, but honestly? After the first few minutes, I forgot it was him. He was quite good--very intense, and clearly dedicated to the role. Alan must be such a draining character to play eight times a week, and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays. So emotionally taxing. And uncomfortable. I think I'd be very uncomfortable, becoming Alan Strang eight times a week for six months. It was uncomfortable enough, watching him. And the horses! They were played by people wearing creepy giant wire head-pieces, and horseshoe-shaped, elevated foot-pieces--they weren't really shoes as much as platforms. Their six stalls were the major set pieces, along with a square platform with four rectangular blocks and a circular brick walkway on it. The lighting was dim, and served to create a lot of the setting--rearranging the blocks and changing the lighting signified a different or multiple scene and time. It was definitely one of the most interesting pieces of ever seen, and even though it was extremely strange, creepy, and unsettling, it was satisfying.

That sounds odd, but it's true. I enjoyed the second act more, particularly Dysert's musings to himself and to the magistrate about which was better: his own responsible, satisfactory life in which he "helped" children, or Alan's life--tortured and painful, but passionate and emotional. I completely sympathize with him. The magistrate argued with him, that there's more than one way to feel passion, and Alan's way lacks maturity and also is extremely difficult--like the way Nick Ray "refused to mature if that meant feeling less." Dysert wishes he hadn't done that, in a way. The magistrate's is the Bridge of San Luis Rey argument--the "passion" exhibited by Alan is self-interest; it exists for itself. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Well, I know how I feel about it--I sympathize with Dysert. But my brain tells me the magistrate is right. I'm not sure if I want to feel that way though.

Equus just reaffirmed my latest thought that perhaps theater work is for me. I don't know though. It also reminded me of Albee's declaration that all playwrights should be experimenting and pushing limits, because I definitely feel that Peter Shaffer did that with this. Though I like the notion that art is for everyone, pieces like Equus is definitely not the kind of thing that would be popular, but I like that: it takes an open mind and a certain sensibility and taste to enjoy and appreciate Equus.

I was also reminded of an interview I read with Matt Doyle. (I swear I'm not a creeper/fanatic. I just happen to agree and react to a lot of what I've read about him. And I happen to have read this recently, so it's fresh in my mind.) A Spring Awakening Fan Club member asked him, "When you lived in London, were there any West End show [sic] you saw that you wished would come over to the US?" He responded:

I saw a lot of theatre when I lived in London. I'm not sure if I want anything to come to Broadway from the West End. And I don't really think Broadway shows should go to the West End. They are two completely different worlds. Broadway is a much more commercial theatre world that runs off of the big budget musicals and London is a much more open place for theatre that has a lot of funding for straight plays and classical theatre. I love both worlds for what they are. However I do wish there was more classical theatre in New York! It's a shame how little there is.

Ugh. Of course American theater is much more commercial and big budget; it's American. Art and commerce are inherently linked here; more now than ever before. I fully appreciate that and all, but at the same time, part of me wishes it wasn't true. Jeremy Piven walked out of Speed-the-Plow the other night, and audiences were [rightly] furious. He's being replaced, I heard, by another big name--William H. Macy, a Mamet veteran. Big names are practically essential for straight plays these days. Equus ran in London before moving to Broadway, taking Griffiths and Radcliffe with it, and I feel like without those two names--especially the latter--it never would have made it. The half empty theater proved it. Broadway is so expensive now--regular orchestra or front mezzanine seats run around $125 now--and I almost feel bad going to see Spring Awakening again when there are a ton of others I want to see, and I have no money. It's rough, and because of the economy, Broadway is taking a huge hit.

So many huge shows are closing in a few weeks: Hairspray, Spamalot, Spring Awakening, Gypsy, Grease. I just saw a NY Times article that said both Equus and August: Osage County have been running with 54% attendance, which is positively criminal; Avenue Q, with 69%. Rent closed in September, and hyped shows American Buffalo and A Tale of Two Cities were barely open before shutting down. It's horrible, and largely because of the economy. Family-oriented shows are still open--the Disney stuff is still going strong, and Shrek just opened. Guys and Dolls is set for another revival, along with West Side Story and Hair, and they'll probably do well for a while with big names and their status as classics, but what about everything else? The Roundabout has a huge slate of plays that sound great set to open this season, and I hope they all do. But who knows. It's the shows that don't have the most popular appeal and potential for commercial success that are taking the biggest hit, and I hate that.

That comment above, about how Broadway is so much more commercial than the West End, is doubtlessly true, and between that and these economic problems--it's crippling theater, and other artistic mediums as well, I'm sure. Theater, though--Broadway is so much less accessible to the general public, and has a much smaller audience than other mediums, which is a shame. Sure, the film industry and music industries will suffer, but theater--half of Broadway is closing, it seems, and it hurts to think about that. It's like that Billy Joel song, "Miami 2017"--"I've seen the lights go out on Broadway."

I'm going to move to Europe.

I have more to write about (including another Matt Doyle thing, haha), but I'll do it another time. It's 3:06 and I'm beat, and I didn't mean to write this much, at all. The whole Broadway situation is just breaking my heart, and I couldn't help a bit of a tangent. Silly blog posts should really not be this damn long. Haha.

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3

More theater thoughts.

I saw Spring Awakening for what probably was my last time on Sunday, and it never, never gets old. It's the only show I've seen more than twice and if I could, I'd see it again. I hate seeming like one of those repeat/die-hard fangirls who are obsessed with it, because I'm not at that level. But to be young, seeing a show whose primary goal is to speak to youths, that exudes the passion and dedication of young people--it's moving. It's the reason for art.

And I still maintain that there is absolutely nothing like theater, as a medium. Film is my present preoccupation that borders on a passion, but theater is my first love, and I definitely believe that on some level, you never get over your first love. I never will, and I hope I don't. The only thing I can think of that is remotely like seeing a good, solid theater production is seeing a movie in a theater...perhaps alone...with a good audience. When you see a movie alone in a theater, the relationship is between you and the filmmaker. All there is in a dark movie theater is you and the big screen. No familiar environment. No one to distract you, unless the audience members are jerks. A good audience makes a huge difference. There are movies I've seen at the Walter Reade for this NYU thing that seem much better to me at the time than they actually are. I definitely believe that it is, in part, because I was alone at the theater with a group of people who are film lovers and who wanted a good film experience as much as I did. In a theater alone, there's nothing stopping you from becoming fully engaged in the film.

That's what you get in theater, except you get it live and in person. You can feel the energy, the emotion and the passion, ringing in every actor's voice. At Spring Awakening, on Sunday, I was lucky enough to have stage seating--I sat next to several of the actors throughout the show. It was interesting to see, so closely, their behavior in between scenes, and guess what was going through their minds.

When the show opened and the actors first came out, one of the leads sat next to me--Gerard Canonico, who plays Moritz. Ironically, one of my suitemates at school went to high school with this kid, and performed in shows with him then. I felt him jittering his leg and clearing his chest all throughout the first numbers, until it was time for him to go on, and I saw the one adult woman in the show turn around from her seat in front of me and share a secretive smile with him. I felt him getting himself psyched up for his performance--it was a remarkable experience, being close enough to witness what seemed like his pre-show ritual.

A little while later, one of the supporting roles sat next to me--Matt Doyle, who's Hanschen and u/s for Melchior...and who's adorable, haha--and sat almost perfectly still the entire 10 or 15 minutes he was there. His stance was wider, more relaxed, and I kept thinking my leg was going to hit his as my foot tapped during the songs. It was as though he had had some hyper-awareness, though, a heightened consciousness that he was still on stage, still performing, still in character. He seemed to be concentrating deeply on what was going on, focusing on when he had to sing backup, and on when it was time for him to get up again--and when he did, the grin on his face showed how much he enjoyed it, even with the hard work. His passion and intensity were beautiful.

Later, Blake Daniel (Ernst) was next to me. He sat with his leg crossed like an old man, relaxed, and during the number where the boys all sing and gesture, he elbowed me. Haha. But it was funny: right before he had to get back up, he straightened his collar and adjusted his sweater to make sure he looked put-together still. He sat across from me, also, and I saw him do the same thing, all through the show. I loved how he worked so professionally, in such a routine manner, yet still with huge feeling.

After him, it was the girl who plays Ilse, Emma Hunton. She slouched back and honestly looked like she was asleep half the time. Granted, she'd just had one of her two big scenes. But still. Her approach was so different. And the last girl, Caitlin Kinnunen, who plays Thea, a minor supporting role, sat relaxed but straight, with her hands in her lap. This was only for a few minutes at the end, but it was, again, different from the rest.

It really was unlike any other theater experience I've ever had. I was majorly impressed with the close-up view, not to mention moved, and I've started looking into Matt Doyle's other projects, in particular. I seriously may try to get tickets one last time, because it's closing mid-January. That's one of the things about theater that can be both good and bad: it's alive, and constantly changing. No two performances are ever the same, even when it's the same actor, and cast members are shuffled around frequently. But when a production ends, it's over for good. There may be revivals, and regional productions and such, but it'll never be the same as its original inception. It's fleeting. But I suppose that's part of the beauty and power of it.

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Now playing: Del Amitri - Roll to Me

"I am a permanent transient..."

Yesterday I finished my honors paper on The Zoo Story / Peter & Jerry and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Notes toward a definition of tragedy). I can't say I'm particularly satisfied with the last 1/3 of it, the part on The Goat, because I rushed. And I'm not happy about it because I really did want to do this right. I realized at the end of the semester that I should have made my paper on Sundance for American Independent Cinema my honors paper, but of course, how was I to know that that was the better idea at the beginning of the semester when I had to hand in my contract? I labored over my Sundance paper. By which I really just mean that I took the time to revise it and refine it until I was fully satisfied. I rarely do that. I didn't do that with Edward Albee and I should have. I just ran out of time.

I think I'm going to do it anyway. Part of the reason I ran out of time is I got caught up when I was doing research. I kept finding this awesome material and trying to fit it into my outline. Fitting it into the outline wasn't the trouble, because it related nicely. The trouble was having to write a longer paper than I anticipated once I added all the stuff I wanted to add to the outline.

My thesis was that Edward Albee's plays are as socially relevant now as they first were in 1958 when he began writing. I realized that even though The Zoo Story, his first play and the first Albee I ever read, and the only I've seen performed, is my first love, I might now love The Goat better. It makes sense though: The Zoo Story was written in the context of the 1950s and it was utterly explosive.

"[Albee's theme] is the enormous and usually insuperable difficulty that human beings find in communicating with each other. More precisely, it is about the maddening effect that the enforced loneliness of the human condition has on the person who is cursed (for in our society it is undoubtedly a curse) with an infinite capacity for love."

- George Wellworth (theater scholar)

Albee addresses this through a single character, the outcast Jerry, in The Zoo Story. The beauty of The Goat is that he addresses this difficulty to communicate and the curse of the "infinite capacity to love" through three of his four characters--a husband, a wife, and their son. The fourth character is the husband and wife's supposed best friend who serves to represent conventional society and their disdain for deviance from their standards. In the same way that a thirty-year-old Albee wrote The Zoo Story within the context of his times and the society of the '50s, a seventy-something Albee--a much more mature and controlled writer by this point--wrote The Goat to reflect society today. And as a member (or outcast?) of that society, I feel like I can appreciate it that much more because it's a world I know--not one I've read about or imagined.

(Note: Quick summary. The Zoo Story is a one-act about two men, Peter and Jerry. Peter is your typical 1950s middle class guy living the American Dream. Jerry is a social outcast living in a terrible boarding house with no family and friends, who cannot get even a dog to love him. Spurned by the world around him, Jerry finds Peter sitting on a park bench one day and tries to talk to him about his isolation. Peter, like everyone else, doesn't understand, so Jerry picks a fight with him, and as Peter holds a knife, Jerry impales himself with it. Jerry's ended his own life, but completely unraveled Peter's, breaking down the pretense everything he thought he knew.

Albee later added another one-act before The Zoo Story, called Homelife, in which Peter is in his apartment with his wife Ann, who tries talking to him about how, even though they have a great, smooth life, she could use a little excitement and chaos--a little imperfection. The main goal is to flesh out Peter's character and set him up for The Zoo Story, but it's nice on its own, too.

The Goat is the story of another man with a seemingly perfect life, Martin Gray. He has a perfect marriage with a woman he loves, Stevie, and a good son, Billy. He's just won what is basically the Nobel Prize of architecture, he's been commissioned to design a $200 billion city, and it's his 50th birthday. However, he is having an affair with a goat with whom he is in love. He tells his best friend Ross in confidence, but Ross tells Stevie, and the rest of the play explores how Stevie deals with the fact that her husband accepts that he is in love with and having sex with a goat, how she deals with the fact that he doesn't understand how this has ruined her life, how Martin deals with himself, and how Billy--a seventeen-year-old gay boy--deals with all of it.)

It's not that other writers don't address how restrained polite society creates feelings of rejection and loss in those who deviate from the norm. But what I love so much about Albee is that he does it with a great appreciation for the ridiculous. It's why so many classify him as "absurdist," even though he rejects that label (he's not a label kind of guy) and, strictly speaking, his plays are much more hopeful than the "more nihilist European absurdist playwrights." Regardless, his plays certainly have absurdist qualities, and it's my kind of humor exactly. The irony and wit, the ridiculousness and absurdity that doesn't take itself too seriously, yet serves to size up the seriousness of a situation--Albee's plays are incredibly balanced in these terms, and I love it.

One critics observes a common thematic thread (well, I guess it's more of a motif) running through several of Albee's play: "the chasm between people, [and] their inability to connect except through pain." When you realize he's been writing about the disconnect between people for fifty full years now, it's daunting. In a sense, it's quite true though. I think a lot of times I've connected with people through my pain, theirs, or mutual pain. And I mean "pain" broadly. Shared frustration with other people. General feelings of loss. Nothing earth-shattering, but still. I wonder why that is. We're the most open and vulnerable when in pain? We need companionship most when we're in pain? It attracts us. It humanizes others. I suppose that try as we might to believe otherwise, in the end we can't survive completely on our own.

You really can see how Albee grew as a writer between The Zoo Story and The Goat. As brilliant as The Zoo Story is, you can see what I'm sure many would condemn as "youthful" indulgence in it--Jerry's what is it, 5 page monologue? The play is hardly 45 pages long. The Goat is much more controlled in tone, and its thematic content is like a mature version of its predecessor, and it is, truly, a tragedy. Albee takes an absurd situation, and that is the "fact" of the play, the foundation; then out of the reactions to the situation, he carefully constructs this this gorgeous family tragedy. He uses what is considered to be an inhumane act to examine the humanity, addressing a host of related themes and ideas: the American dream, marital relations, parent/child relations, a loss of identity in middle age, the way an adolescent searches for identity, the desire to be understood, the way love hurts more than hate, the way it can overcome seemingly unforgivable acts--and the way, sometimes, it seems like love is not enough to overcome.

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Now playing: The Decemberists - O Valencia!

xkcd keeps distracting me.

Focusing on studying would be a lot easier if I was not in such a great mood. I haven't tricked myself into feeling overwhelmed yet, and it's kind of problematic. I have about 48 hours to study for a stupidly extensive exam and write a way-too-ambitious paper on the social relevance of Edward Albee in the 1950s vs. now. That all sucks, and so do a lot of other things, but it's okay, because life is good.